Classical Christianity affirms that humans can no longer after the fall of Adam have experience of God on their own, lest they die. Genesis tells us that the place of that experience, Eden, is divinely guarded from human re-entrance by angels, divine servants, wielding death. John's Gospel tells us, though, that angels ascend to heaven and descend to earth on the Son of God, Jesus Christ, because He has opened the way into the presence of God for all who believe in Him.

There is now in Christ communication and interaction between the world of humanity and God's presence. Jesus in that same Gospel declares Himself to be the only way to the Father, indicating the unique role He plays as the only Son of God, a statement made on the eve of His sacrificial death. In that death, classical Christianity has understood Jesus to be what the NT book of Hebrews explains as the sole Mediator between God and humanity.

At that time, Jesus' disciples as faithful Jews of their day, did not have a vision for extending the good news of the Kingdom of God to the Gentiles. Jesus did. When He spoke to one, recorded in John 4, He specifically told her, "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." As Messiah of the Jews, Jesus Himself was the salvation from the Jews, and He declared it openly to this worshiper in another religion.

Christ's mediation is necessary, because human sin prevents communion with God, from both God's side and the human side. The expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, with all the harshness of the human condition that we are so well aware of, is not simply the result of human choice. Humans do not choose to be miserable. Rather, we choose what we think will make us happy.

Yet God has chosen that we should be miserable--and that by simply allowing us all our desires, because we have chosen to live without God. It is only through the coming of Christ on our behalf, and His reconciling sacrifice on our behalf that God has become reconciled to us, in Christ, so that the way back into His presence is once again possible. God has chosen to provide a way out of our misery for us, a way that He alone could provide, and it meant His experiencing the death which He told Adam would be the inevitable consequence of disobedience.

Schori's theology suggests that belief in God generically, whether in the expression of Christian religion or Hindu religion, is sufficient for truthful experience of God, restoration of the Edenic relation in some sense. Yet, to affirm that means three things. First, it is simply to deny that God was ever in any way alienated from us; second, it means that reconciling ourselves to God is simply a matter of our choice, not His; and third, it means that whatever the story of Jesus means, it does not indicate that Jesus accomplished anything universally applicable to humanity in relation to God. In a January, 2007 interview with Laura Lynn Brown of the (Little Rock) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Schori said in regard to John 14:6,

"I certainly don't disagree with that statement that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. But the way it's used is as a truth serum, or a touchstone: If you cannot repeat this statement, then you're not a faithful Christian or person of faith. I think Jesus as way - that's certainly what it means to be on a spiritual journey. It means to be in search of relationship with God. We understand Jesus as truth in the sense of being the wholeness of human expression. What does it mean to be wholly and fully and completely a human being? Jesus as life, again, an example of abundant life. We understand him as bringer of abundant life but also as exemplar. What does it mean to be both fully human and fully divine? Here we have the evidence in human form. So I'm impatient with the narrow understanding, but certainly welcoming of the broader understanding.

Asked about the rest of Christ's declaration: 'No man cometh unto to the father but by me,' Jefferts Schori continued.

'Again in its narrow construction, it tends to eliminate other possibilities. In its broader construction, yes, human beings come to relationship with God largely through their experience of holiness in other human beings. Through seeing God at work in other people's lives. In that sense, yes, I will affirm that statement. But not in the narrow sense, that people can only come to relationship with God through consciously believing in Jesus,' she said."

Early in February, 2007, Schori gave an interview with USA Today:

"Indeed, asked about her critics, Jefferts Schori doesn't blink. She leans in, drops her voice even lower and cuts to the chase.

She sees two strands of faith: One is "most concerned with atonement, that Jesus died for our sins and our most important task is to repent." But the other is "the more gracious strand," says the bishop who dresses like a sunrise.

It "is to talk about life, to claim the joy and the blessings for good that it offers, to look forward.

"God became human in order that we may become divine. That's our task."

God becoming human in order that we might become divine is a quotation from Athanasius' famous work on the On the Incarnation of the Word. Yet he also says there, "The death on the Cross, then, for us has proved seemly and fitting, and its cause has been shewn to be reasonable in every respect; and it may justly be argued that in no other way than by the Cross was it right for the salvation of all to take place." (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, §26) The bishop quotes the father of the Church, but misses his meaning, pulling apart into two strands what he only knew as one. St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, put it this way: "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." (Galatians 6:14 ESV) The life, joy, and blessings of Christ are found in the Cross, not apart from it.

Classical Christianity understands a certain specific relation to exist between God the Creator and His human creature, such that the creature can find no true Good other than the Creator. The choice to sin, to violate the Creator's intent for the creature, is to turn away from that Good to a human desire other than Him. Schori in the interview with NPR, identifies both that humans with desires that deviate from the revealed will of God are perfectly acceptable to God, and that restored relation to God is possible without the mediation of Christ.

In other words, her theological understanding is that God has never been alienated from humanity by our sin, such that the sacrifice of Christ was needed to overcome that alienation. We are solely the problem in that we often do not believe God exists. Her understanding of God is also that He has not said anything prohibitive about homosexual practice.

Consequently, one can indulge in homosexual practice and believe in God, entering into His presence "through the experience of Jesus." The liturgical and narrative form of Christian religion--or any other--allows anyone access to God if they so choose, because we in our choosing not to believe in Him are the only problem.

What is missing in this theology? What about a Person on the other end of this relation? God is construed in Schori's theology as a static being Who by definition loves all, accepts all, and rejects none. Yet all human experience of persons indicates that persons have self-determination, likes and dislikes, limits that the person alone determines of what to them is tolerable and acceptable--for themselves. It would seem that in Schori's theology, God is not given this freedom of Self-determination, because by definition, any human desire is acceptable to God, if the human simply believes in God's existence.

But, this last statement is almost certainly false. Schori would most reasonably not agree that any human desire is acceptable to God. She is, after all, a religious woman, and religious people all over the world maintain standards of some sort. She asks in the interview with NPR, "How can I live a life that is good?" which indicates that she will set aside some things and embrace others, again as any religious person would. Yet, God is this One for her Who accepts and loves all, so what are His limits to tolerance?

The answer, I suspect, is hidden in plain sight. God's limits, His Self-determination, are hers. There is no reason to view her as somehow all alone in this determination. She is the head of the Episcopal Church for a reason. Her determination is their determination.

God's Self-determination is their determination for Him. Schori and the Episcopal Church do not believe in an impersonal God, but in a Personal God Who is the expression or image of their own persons. He chooses what they choose. Thus, Schori can be open-ended about what future marginalized persons might be the next for God to accept, because as her Church so determines to accept them, so God chooses to accept them.

Schori's God is a God Who has not spoken in the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures, where anyone can read His unchanging will on moral issues, even if they will need help understanding lots of complexity in some of their pages requiring all our human ability to interpret. Rather, He is a God Who speaks through the Church of which she is the head. The Scriptures are useful in their religion insofar as they provide a liturgical context for experiencing God, but they are decidedly unhelpful insofar as they are taken to indicate His own Self-determination--when that conflicts with her church's self-determination.

Classical Christianity understands a certain relation of Creator-creature where the creature knows the unchanging will of the Creator, because the Creator has revealed it. Justice, for instance, is an unchanging will of the Creator. Mercy, on the other hand, which depends on justice to exist for its own existence, is the face that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. God has proven Himself just and the justifier of those who believe in His Son, because He has both dealt with sin as He considers it--meriting death, and been merciful to humanity by taking it upon Himself, so that we can receive eternal life through faith in the One Mediator. That's good news.

In the case of sexual sin, God's mercy in Christ means that forgiveness is available to us through Him, a forgiveness that is necessary because His will regarding sexuality has never changed. Christ mediates for us because we have violated His will, and are trapped in an empty world of our own choosing.

The gospel of the Episcopal Church, however, omits that Mediation in its recent practice, because it make exceptions to the unchanging will of God, by virtue of not believing that God has truly spoken it. "Has God said . . .?" was the essence of the temptation to Adam and Eve that resulted in the loss of God's loving presence in the first place, and it is still the essence of the temptation. This is where Schori's faith of a scientist is deceiving.

An example unrelated to the sexuality issue may be helpful. In the 1600's anyone not using leeches for medicinal purposes was considered obstinate or ignorant. In the 1800s anyone using leeches for medicinal purposes was considered ignorant or obstinate. Today, one must pay a great deal for the prized use of leeches for medicinal purposes, e.g. when a limb is reattached. Leeches haven't changed. The actual medicinal value of leeches for humans hasn't changed. What has changed is scientific knowledge. First, in one direction, and then, in another. The reason isn't a bad one. To verify knowledge scientifically, one must follow the method, and stick to what is known. That requires being open to new knowledge overturning old conclusions, even if things turn back around yet again as even newer knowledge arises.

Katharine Jefferts Schori is a scientist. Her knowledge, and that of her church, regarding the will of God, has been made subject to human science. Human science appears at the moment, at least to some, to favor homosexuality as a natural condition. At least this seems true for many scientifically-minded people in the West that so consider it. Actual scientific evidence is not the basis for this shift away from the older pervasive taboos against it. Rather, the basis is itself the rejection of the older taboos. The reason, as commentators have noted endlessly, is that the only moral limitation science recognizes is self-destruction or self-harm. If something harms me or us, it is wrong. Most, if not all, scientists will agree that it is wrong to kill a 10 year old girl in order to harvest her organs as parts for biological research. That consensus is drastically changed when talking about a fetus because the issue of "harm" seems vastly different, humans not having any self-empathy for what it feels like to be a fetus, since none can remember ever being such, though we all were. When the self is the standard of morality, all it has to go by is its own ability to empathize.

When divine revelation was no longer considered to exist by scientifically minded Westerners in the last centuries, sexual taboos were dismissed. Instead, sex was then studied in humans as if we were fish. Acts of immorality occurred in laboratories as scientists took readings and measurements of couples having sex, resulting in a trove of knowledge about what feels good, the G-spot, the dispelling of false sexual myths, etc. Some of this learning has been genuinely helpful, since people used to maintain sexual ignorance because sexuality was quite private, being something they believed had moral significance to God.

Once sexual taboos were no longer in place, sex became objective, and sexual desire ipso facto became completely natural--any sexual desire that bought no harm to others. Scientists who lack a homosexual desire aren't harmed by it in others. Homosexuals in the grip of the desire aren't harmed by it--or aren't admitting it (they have a lot more diseases, die a lot younger, and can never bear children through their homosexual practice). Homosexuality is no longer off-limits according to scientists because it appears not to do harm, being to them a harmless desire, ergo it must be natural.

If one takes the moral law of God, conveniently summed up in the Ten Commandments, there is a suprising thing to be observed. Since all peoples do not follow the Judaeo-Christian faith, the worship commands at the beginning won't be acknowledged by all humans as morally binding, so for the sake of this analysis, let's set them aside. The last commandment is not observable, not in others and all too frequently not in ourselves--motive--so let's set that aside.

Of the rest, all of them are commonly held throughout humanity because they guard self-interest. It is wrong to kill, because you might kill me. It is wrong to steal, because you might steal my stuff, and so on. All except the commandment to commit no adultery. If the husband and the wife agree, why would it be wrong? Who is harmed? If two people of any sex agree on a sexual relation between themselves, why would it be wrong? Social scientists might say that there are limits of childhood age and so forth, but in the biblical era, people were quite clear that God had an opinion. He was harmed, ergo it was sin. It's all there in the Bible for anyone to read, and homosexuality is only a small part.

Why would God be harmed by human sexual acts? Since Jesus answered His questioners about divorce in marriage by referring to the created state of male and female, that is where the answer lies. The Genesis account does not describe humans as homo sapiens, or as "humans" but as Latin Christian theology has translated it, imago dei, the image of God. That is the definition of human being.

We were created to image God. Sexuality "harms" God because His created image doesn't image Him when a) permanent fidelity is not part of the sexual union--because God created us to be in intimate relation with Him and He is permanently faithful, and b) otherness is not part of the sexual relation--because God is not like us, He is truly Other. Otherness in sexual relation results in the physical creation of new life, an aspect of the image of the Creator Who alone gives life. Sexuality was intended by God--including with its ecstatic enjoyment--to teach us continually about Him Who as our faithful and loving Creator made us for an eternity of endlessly learning about and enjoying and valuing Him.

As images, the sexual relationship teaches us about ourselves in relation to God. When that image is broken, however, it teaches us nothing about Him. It fails to be in any way transcendent, and becomes simply about our transient pleasure, ultimately lust, not love, and so idolatrous. God is harmed by our sexual sins because His purposes in creating us are thwarted, twisted, distorted.

In terms of homosexuality, the trust necessary to overcome otherness is not there. Empathy of the self alone is sufficient for the relation, for "I am as you are." In terms of heterosexual sin, the overwhelmingly superficial incredulity of "what's our having a little bit of fun to God?" is a deep denial of who we are as His images in the first place. It expresses an attitude of distance toward God in which He is over there and we are over here, where we want our pleasures. That He created that pleasure to teach us about our relation to Him, as Other as He is, is entirely lost upon us.

Lost is precisely what this divine relation is to the scientifically-minded who approach sexual practice as a phenomenon of a natural universe where only self-harm indicates moral limits. It might come back--remember leeches--but right now, Schori and the Episcopal Church are acting on what they know as scientists. To them, there is no compelling reason to exclude homosexuality by calling it a sin. After her selection as the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church Schori was asked by CNN if homosexuality was a sin, and she replied, "I don't believe so."

But notice her reason that it is not a sin: "Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender." Observation of the natural world, based on desires expressed by the humans observed. There is no evaluation of the moral health of the desire itself simply because desires that don't harm a human "me" aren't moral, by definition for the naturalistically-minded. What about God? Can't He have an opinion? Can't He have His own opinion? Can't He have His own opinion about His own creation? Can't He have His own opinion about His own creation that He created for His own purposes, not for ours? Isn't God the One Who determines what is, and is not, a sin, which by definition is a violation of His will?

For Schori and the Episcopal Church, that answer is no, because they speak for God.

Therein lies the difference between Christianity and the Episcopal Church.

* One has good news of an eternity with God predicated on God's actually having revealed Himself in words and in a Person Who is essential to restoring our lost relation to God so that eternal life can begin through faith in Him. The other has good news about a nice life, doing good and feeling good today, and thinking positive thoughts about eternity simply in parallel with every other religion in the world, as Schori has said.
* One is predicated on knowledge about God from God, i.e. Self-revelation. The other is predicated on scientific knowledge, which can only arrive at a vague sense of mystery at the marvels of the universe, as Schori describes in her own journey to faith.
* One looks to what God has revealed about Himself to know what He is like; the other looks to those who worship Him to describe what they think Him to be like.
* One believes God to be Personal, and so accords Him the respect due a Person, listening to Him even when what He says crosses our desires; the other says He is Personal but treats Him as impersonal, acting confidently on our desires, assuming what we will is what He wills, within the constraints of our perception of our self-harm.

Jesus told the worshiper from Samaria that they worshiped what they did not know, and that salvation was from the Jews. Being a worshiper of God in any religious form is not necessarily redemptive, unless God says it is, and He did not. The difficulty with Katharine Jefferts Schori's Episcopal theology in the end, is simply Jesus.

Christians have always allowed themselves to be put to death for the sake of Christ because there simply is no other name (and in the biblical period, this was synonymous with what we know as "person") under heaven by which we can be saved. Martyrdom is ultimate fidelity, "till death do us part," and the teaching of the New Testament is that it shall not part the Christian from the resurrected Christ, but we shall share in resurrection with Him.

There is simply no reason for such a thing as martyrdom now for Episcopalians; there are many other ways to redemption. Paul's warning to the Galatians describes a form of Christianity already in his day that wanted Christ without the cross: "It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ."

The enlightened scientific mind considers sexual behavior a matter of indifference. Why appear silly in their sight - and so suffer their abuse - by insisting that it does matter to God when we have no evidence for such a thing except biblical statements?

To trust that the Bible actually is the word of God, and so to proscribe as immoral what the scientifically-minded find to be natural, would be like insisting on using leeches in the 1900s. We'd be laughed at. Yet, the cost of loving the world by going along with its approval of all forms of sexual practice is high. We see it in Schori's theology. Having abandoned God's revealed purposes for earthly sexuality, spiritual adultery becomes the result.

Anglicanism is at a crossroads in 2007, not because humans don't know enough about sexuality, but because many of them have chosen not to know enough about the Lord Jesus Christ and the redemption He has accomplished. There can be no neutral resolution, for marriage is an affair of the heart that in God's design, is exclusive. The Church--redeemed humanity--has but one Husband, and He one Bride.

---The Rev. Dr. Joseph P. Murphy is Director of the Anglican Studies Program for the Anglican Mission in America, and is adjunct teaching theology at Wheaton College and Northern Seminary. He was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church in 2001 and was received into the Church of Rwanda in 2004.